Reviewing mobile applications that can improve efficiency, productivity and client care. This blog also fosters communication between psychologists and application developers.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Making learning accessible: on all platforms

Being neuropsychologist or psychologist you will have, at one point or another, to encourage your patients to learn new materiel. A traumatic brain injury patient might have to learn the names and faces of its therapists, but could not. A stroke patient might have aphasia or visual agnosia, and he would need cognitive remediation. Your patient with relational problems might need to remind himself of his maladaptive schema triggers. The scenarios are endless, has there are subjects to be learned.

What Anki does for you and your patient is to give you a learning platform based on flashcards. On one side you have the question, and on the other the answer. Everything is customizable to your liking. You can use text, picture, audio or even video on all flashcards. You simply use the medium that is appropriated to the materiel that you want to learn. Now, where Anki becomes a real innovative tool is in its capability to create statistics and different frequency of repetitions based on your learning curve. Each time you answer, Anki will ask you to what level was it easy for you to get the it right. According to that, the program will plot a recurrence frequency that will suit your needs. You will also be able to distribute that frequency on a timeframe of your choice. That is to say that you can learn intensively for a week or in your spare time over the next month, it’s your choice to make.

Anki is an open source program. It can be used on a PC, Mac, Android, IPhone, Linux or web based interface. All those platforms can be linked together by cloud computing. So the learning you did on your Android phone, while you were on the move, can be continued at home on your PC. The only drawback for this App is that you cannot lock the access to the program (although you can lock your access to your account). Many decks already exist and they are freely available. You can also make and publish your own deck. In the end not only your patients will use it, but probably you will also.